1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to the determining of the sex of a chick and more particularly to apparatuses for automatically determining the sex of a chick.
2. Prior Art
Presently in the art the sex of a chick is determined manually by a human being. Such human beings are specially trained and make a determination as to the sex of a chick based upon their perception of certain characteristics of the chick. The characteristics which are of particular interest are those contained in the anus of the chick. These characteristics are color, shape, gloss and softness. The significance and differences are shown and described in "Study of the Fowl Sex and Sex Determination" by Kiyoshi Masui which was published on Oct. 20, 1975. From these characteristics a trained chick sex checker can determine the sex of a chick.
However, such human being must undergo a long training period and the accuracy of such human beings is determined by the degree of skill of each individual human being. Therefore, there has long been felt a need that chick sexing should be done by a machine so that the long training period and dependency on the individual skill of the sex checker can be eliminated.
To this end, there has been developed apparatuses which check the sex of a chick. One such apparatus consists of a mechanical device which inserts mechanical sensors into the anal area of a chick. This device, however, has been unsuccessful because it has certain disadvantages. These disadvantages are that the mechanical sensors may damage the chick and the device is no faster in determining the sex of a chick than a human being.